Categories
GeekWire

Worldcon celebrates science fiction’s past and future

Illustration showing futuristic cartoon characters with Seattle Worldcon 2025 sign
Seattle Worldcon 2025 strikes a retro-futuristic theme. (Characters by Matt Youngmark / Logo by Rob Carlos)

Thousands of science fiction and fantasy fans will be going back to the future this week when Seattle plays host to Worldcon, the world’s premier sci-fi convention, for the first time since the Space Needle opened its doors.

“The Pacific Northwest is a great community of makers and doers and learners, and people really deeply engaged in speculative fiction and all that genre has to offer,” Kathy Bond, the chair of Seattle Worldcon 2025, told me. “We want to share that with the rest of our world community.”

Registered Worldcon members selected the site of the annual convention under the auspices of the World Science Fiction Society — a tradition that started with the first convention in New York City in 1939. Seattle’s organizers have been preparing for this week since 2017, when they sent in their initial bid to host Worldcon.

Bond, a volunteer who works as an attorney at her day job, became involved after attending her first Worldcon in 2015 in Spokane. “From there, I got it into my head that we could totally do this in Seattle,” Bond said.

The path hasn’t always been smooth: This spring, a controversy arose over the revelation that generative AI was used to glean information about prospective speakers. Bond issued an apology, and the organizers reworked the process for vetting Worldcon’s panelists — but the episode led some writers and fans to create a one-day alternative convention called ConCurrent Seattle, set for Aug. 14.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

NASA thanks suppliers for work on the next big moonshot

NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg in lab at L3Harris / Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Wash.
NASA astronaut Woody Hoburg faces the TV cameras at L3Harris’ Aerojet Rocketdyne facility in Redmond, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

REDMOND, Wash. — The first crewed flight around the moon in more than 50 years is still months away, but NASA is already saying thank you to L3Harris Technologies’ Aerojet Rocketdyne segment and other suppliers who are making the trip possible.

Today, NASA’s road trip brought agency officials — plus astronaut Woody Hoburg — to the L3Harris facility in Redmond, which has contributed propulsion systems to NASA missions ranging from space shuttle flights to the Voyager probes’ journeys to the edge of the solar system.

Now NASA is getting ready to launch four astronauts on a round-the-moon mission known as Artemis 2, powered in part by hardware built in Redmond. Hoburg, who spent six months on the International Space Station in 2023 and is awaiting his next crew assignment, told an audience of about 200 L3Harris employees and VIPs that the Artemis 2 crew is well aware of the company’s contribution.

“They’re depending on you, and they know they can count on you,” he said. “Thank you for all the hard work you’re doing to make this amazing adventure possible.”

The Artemis 2 mission is currently targeted for launch next April, or perhaps even earlier, said Howard Hu, NASA’s program manager for the Orion crew vehicle. The mission after that, Artemis 3, is due to lift off no earlier than mid-2027 with the goal of landing astronauts on the lunar surface for the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972.

L3Harris’ Aerojet Redmond team delivered the hardware for those two Artemis missions — including auxiliary engines for Orion’s European-built service module — years ago. Now the team is working on thrusters for missions as far out as Artemis 8, which is scheduled to go the moon no earlier than 2033.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
Fiction Science Club

Climate-fiction thriller explores Florida’s flooded future

Detail from "Salvagia" book cover
The cover art for "Salvagia" features a semi-sentient boat and "atmo-breaker" rockets. (Artwork: Steve Thomas for Diversion Books)

How will technology — and society — adapt to the dramatic effects that climate change is expected to bring? Will necessity become the mother of invention in a world of rising seas? Will it be business as usual? Or will it be a little bit of both those scenarios?

A new sci-fi novel called “Salvagia” takes the third way: There are high-tech salvagers who make ends meet by dredging up artifacts from the flooded ruins of Miami. There are high-flying daredevils who race rockets through minefields of space junk.  And there are also greedy folks who dream of using massive machines to build high-rises on South Florida’s new coast.

Guess which ones are the bad guys.

The book’s author, Tim Chawaga, says he wanted to blend the glittery tech of our modern world with the gritty drama of a Florida noir crime novel. “I wanted it to be like street-level conversations about how individual people can use technology in more powerful ways,” he says in the latest episode of the Fiction Science podcast.

“It’s characters who are outsiders, outside of institutions, trying to build something else. … It’s not likely that they will achieve that in a meaningful and significant way. Maybe at best, incremental. And that feels very noirish to me,” he says.

Continue reading “Climate-fiction thriller explores Florida’s flooded future”
Categories
GeekWire

NASA funds studies focusing on orbital transfer vehicles

Illustration: Blue Ring vehicle in orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Blue Ring space platform in orbit. (Blue Origin Illustration)

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture is among six companies that will be producing studies for NASA looking at low-cost ways to use orbital transfer vehicles to deliver spacecraft to hard-to-reach orbits for the space agency.

The awards will support nine studies in all, with a maximum total value of about $1.4 million, NASA said today.

“With the increasing maturity of commercial space delivery capabilities, we’re asking companies to demonstrate how they can meet NASA’s need for multi-spacecraft and multi-orbit delivery to difficult-to-reach orbits beyond current launch service offerings,” Joe Dant, orbital transfer vehicle strategic initiative owner for the Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, said in a news release. “This will increase unique science capability and lower the agency’s overall mission costs.”

Blue Origin will conduct two studies — one that focuses on potential NASA applications for its Blue Ring multi-mission space mobility platform, and another that focuses on how the upper stage of its New Glenn rocket could be used.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Interlune sets up a moon mission to hunt for helium

Illustration: Astrolab rover on the moon
An artist’s conception shows Astrolab’s FLIP rover on the moon. (Astrolab Illustration)

Seattle-based Interlune says it’s struck a deal with California-based Astrolab to send a multispectral camera to the moon to estimate how much helium-3 is present in lunar soil.

Interlune’s camera will be one of the payloads aboard Astrolab’s FLEX Lunar Innovation Platform rover, or FLIP for short. The FLIP rover is scheduled to take a piggyback ride to the moon’s south polar region aboard Astrobotics’ Griffin lander as soon as late 2025.

The mission will mark Interlune’s first off-Earth step in its campaign to identify and extract helium-3 from the moon and return it to Earth. Helium-3 can be used for applications ranging from quantum computing to security screening to fusion energy production. But it’s rare on Earth: Interlune has pegged the commercial price of helium-3 at as much as $20 million per kilogram.

Interlune is betting that lunar helium-3, which is produced when charged particles from the sun hit moon dirt, will become a cheaper source — and a source of revenue for the startup. The multispectral camera that Interlune has developed in partnership with NASA’s Ames Research Center will be used to estimate helium-3 quantities and concentration around Griffin’s landing site, without having to bring samples back to Earth.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Investigators say Titan sub tragedy was ‘preventable’

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush
In a 2017 image, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is framed by the carbon-fiber cylinder for the Titan sub's hull. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

In a report issued today, the U.S. Coast Guard panel investigating the loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible and its occupants in 2023 blamed the disaster on a series of safety lapses — and issued recommendations that were aimed at heading off future tragedies.

“This marine casualty and the loss of five lives was preventable,” Jason Neubauer, the chair of the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation, said in a news release.

The 335-page report said the Coast Guard would have referred the CEO and founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate, Stockton Rush, to the Justice Department for criminal investigation if he had survived Titan’s catastrophic implosion on June 18, 2023. Rush, who piloted the sub, died instantly during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic, along with four passengers: Titanic expert P.H. Nargeolet, British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, and Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Crypto billionaire finally gets his $28M trip into space

Blue Origin New Shepard rocket ship lifts off
Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship rises from its West Texas launch pad. (Blue Origin via YouTube)

Controversial crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun finally got his suborbital ride into space today from Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture, four years after he put in the winning $28 million bid for a seat.

Five other spacefliers were alongside Sun when Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship rose from its pad at the company’s Launch Site One in West Texas at 7:42 a.m. CT (5:42 a.m. PT) for a 10-minute trip.

When Sun emerged from the crew capsule after the flight, he made a thumbs-up gesture, then stepped down to kiss the ground.

“I wished to go into space since I was a child, and after almost 30 years, it’s come true,” Sun said on Blue Origin’s webcast. “For this mission I waited four years, but we finally delivered it. I really appreciate Mr. Bezos and his team to make it possible. … This is my first commitment and step to space, and we will have more.”

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Space ventures see defense as the funding frontier

Illustration: Golden Dome visualization
The Golden Dome is envisioned as a network of satellites and interceptors that could counter incoming missiles. (Lockheed Martin Illustration)

Will the Golden Dome be a golden opportunity for commercial space ventures?

That may be a bit of an exaggeration. But at a Seattle Tech Week presentation on the space industry, a panel of entrepreneurs agreed that military projects — including a plan to create a missile defense shield along the lines of Israel’s Iron Dome by as early as 2028 — seem to be the most promising vehicles for getting commercial space ventures off the ground.

Part of the reason for that has to do with the uncertainty that’s surrounding America’s civilian space program. At the same time that the White House is pushing plans for the $175 billion Golden Dome project, it’s seeking to trim billions of dollars from NASA’s budget.

“It’s so interesting right now, because I think there’s more uncertainty around civil space funding than there’s ever been before, and more bullishness on defense space funding than there’s ever been before,” said Erika Wagner, who left Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture last year to lead The Exploration Company’s U.S. business development team.

Seattle-area space companies have been among the beneficiaries of the Pentagon’s surge of support — ranging from the $25 million in Space Force funding granted to Seattle-based Integrate in June to the $2.4 billion in Space Force launch contracts set aside for Kent-based Blue Origin earlier this year. Gravitics, Starfish Space and Portal Space Systems are among other Seattle-area space ventures benefiting from recent Pentagon contracts.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Techies team up in quantum realms and on space frontier

Combonation image of hand holding quantum chip and satellite in orbit
At left: Microsoft’s Majorana quantum chip. At right: Xplore’s Xcraft satellite. (Credits: Microsoft / Xplore)

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Quantum physics and outer space may seem as different as two tech frontiers can be, but the challenges facing Pacific Northwest ventures that are aiming to make their fortune on those frontiers are surprisingly similar.

Amid the current turbulence on the national political scene, it’s getting harder to capture the attention — and gain the support — of the federal government, which has historically been the leading funder of research and development. And that means it’s more important than ever for researchers, industry leaders and local officials to join forces.

“Think of it as a triad,” said Jason Yager, executive director of the Montana Photonics and Quantum Alliance, which is one of the beneficiaries of a $41 million Tech Hub grant awarded by the federal government a year ago. “If all of these pieces are working together, then where they meet is socio-economic growth, and then you’re ready to bring in the additional funding to launch that.”

Yager and other tech leaders from the northwest U.S. and western Canada compared notes today at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue during the Pacific Northwest Economic Region’s annual summit.

Get the full story on GeekWire
Categories
GeekWire

Crypto billionaire is finally getting his $28M ride to space

Digital rendering: Justin Sun in spacesuit
A digital rendering shows crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun in a spacesuit. (Justin Sun via X / Twitter in 2021)

Four years after he put in a precedent-setting $28 million bid for a suborbital space trip, crypto billionaire Justin Sun is due to fly on the next mission planned by Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture.

Sun and five other people were listed today as participants in Blue Origin’s NS-34 mission, which will be the company’s 14th crewed spaceflight. The date for liftoff from Blue Origin’s Launch Site One in West Texas hasn’t yet been announced.

In a posting to the X social-media platform, Sun said he was “proud to join Blue Origin’s NS-34 mission and continue encouraging youth to pursue their dreams in science and space.” And in a follow-up posting, Sun claimed the title of “the youngest Chinese commercial astronaut.”

It’s been a long and not-always-smooth road to space for Sun, the 34-year-old founder of the Tron blockchain venture.

Until recently, Sun was the subject of a federal investigation over alleged market manipulation and unregistered sales of crypto asset securities. That case was put on hold in February, and a couple of months later, Sun earned a place of prominence at a crypto dinner with President Donald Trump by purchasing the biggest share of the $TRUMP meme coin.

Get the full story on GeekWire